More Fancy Route 66 Writing

Going back to the March/April 2008 issue of Preservation Magazine which featured an good-sized article on good old Route 66.

"On the Road Back? Route 66--past,present, and future" by Krista Walton.

At least this part had pictures of a vibrant 66 with a night time shot of the Blue Swallow Motel and daytime of one of the Tee Pee motels with an old car parked in front of it along with three vintage postcards.

A few interesting quotes:

*** "And it has lingered as a symbol in the imagination of the nation evoking everything from freedom and adventure to the fading American frontier and, now, distilled nostalgia."

*** "Indeed, no other road has so outshone its humble origins of asphalt and concrete to be so frequently immortalized in the arts, be it John Steinbeck's The Grapes of wrath, the Dust Bowl Photography of Dorothea Lange, Jack Kerouac's On the Road, the 1960s television series Route 66, or the ditty sung by Nat King Cole, "(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66."

*** "By the 1940s. rest stops and diners began to spring up along the way, offering respite to weary travelers. But it wasn't until after World War II, when Americans were more mobile than ever before, that Route 66's heyday truly began."

*** "With the new tourism industry fueling rapid growth, the kitschy landmarks that are now synonymous with Route 66--motels shaped like oversized teepees, enormous roadside sculptures of everything from astronauts to whales, and signs in every color of the neon rainbow--infused the Mother Road (as Steinbeck dubbed it) with a healthy dose of Americana and the average road trip with a good little bit of flair."

Man, I sure wish I could write like this!!

She went on to talk about how so much of these great places along the road are in a state of "limbo, suffering from lack of maintenance and threatened by pressure from developers."

The National Trust for Historic Preservation named Route 66 motels onto its 2007 list of 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.

The issue had a nice 12 page spread on one of our favorite roads.

Still getting My Kicks on You-Know-What. --RoadDog